It was late in the afternoon when Sarah Reese found herself stepping off the elevator and into the waiting room that had almost become home to Connor Rhodes over the past few hours. In her hands she held two coffees, both mochas with a double shot of espresso for the extra caffeine boost. It had been three hours since Doctor Choi had been shot and there was still no word from the surgeons regarding his progress. The last she had heard they were still searching the second bullet that had apparently gone astray somewhere in his chest. She knew it didn't look good for him but she knew if anyone could pull through this it would Doctor Choi, he was one of the strongest people she knew, inside the hospital and outside it.
What he had done for her today... Words could not describe her only had he saved her life but he had also saved her dignity, seemingly at the cost of his own and there was no way she could ever repay him but she could honor him. Right now Connor was grieving his lover, stuck in the treacherous valley of limbo, the young surgeon was never good with indecision. Sarah had come to learn that about him over the past year whilst she had worked along side of him. What she hadn't known was the fact somewhere along the way he had fallen in love with his colleague.
As a psych resident she felt she should have picked up on that but the truth was she hadn't had a clue and it appeared with the exception of Doctor Charles none of the other people they worked with had either. When she looked back there had been signs, the secret smiles they seemed to share every once in a while, both seemed happier, more secure in themselves. She knew that one of her faults was putting people into tidy little boxes and if she was really honest with herself she could admit that she had done that with each of them. Both had past relationships with women so she had never expected the possibility that they would fall for one another, the fact that they had though...
That didn't surprise her at all.
They worked well together in a professional capacity and on a much more personal level. Despite coming from different backgrounds Connor had always seemed to understand Ethan's rigidness and that carefree side of him softened their formerly uptight colleague. Ethan was always the reliable one in any given situation, she had lost count of the amount of times he had been a pillar of strength in the face of adversity, always supporting the people around him. She knew deep down that Doctor Rhodes needed that. He'd lived a solitary existence for such a long time before he'd come to Chicago Med, always maintaining distance between him and other people for fear that his father would turn them the way he had others in the past. She knew that from conversations the two of them had had during her internship in the E.D. He'd never come out and say it but the implications had been there all the same.
Having just seen the exchange between Connor and his father she could see that he had valid enough reason to think like that. The older man was a classic narcissist, everything that had happened today had been hellishly traumatic for his son and all he could focus on was the potential damage it may do to his reputation. She didn't understand how Connor had managed to survive that man. Suddenly his time away from Chicago made a hell of a lot more sense. A father like that was enough to drive anyone a little crazy.
Her eyes came to rest on Connor as he sunk back into the lime green half moon chair he had previously occupied and placed his dark head in his hands. His shoulders were wrought with tension as he rubbed at his eyes with his palms wearily. She couldn't imagine what he had to be going through right now. He carried that burden so valiantly, she simply couldn't understand how the hell he was still standing under the weight of it all. A lesser man would have crumbled eons ago.
Wordlessly she came to sit down in the seat beside him, the cardboard take out cups of coffee coming to rest upon each of her knees as she made herself comfortable. Connor, sensing the movement, raised his head from his hands, tipping his chin towards her in greeting. Sarah reached out the coffee in her left hand towards him. He took it without saying a word and it occurred to her that the poor man was probably too emotionally exhausted to even speak. He sipped his coffee gingerly, closing his eyes briefly as he allowed himself to indulge in the sweet and somehow bitter taste.
"He saved me." Sarah said finally, her eyes roving up to the florescent lights on the ceiling as she warmed her palms on the take out cup clasped between her hands. "He could have walked away..."
"No he couldn't." Connor sighed, leaning forward in his chair, his thumb tracing along the firm, cardboard ripples of the cup. "He's not built like that."
"How do you thank someone for something like that?" she asked him, her chest heavy with emotion as she remembered those moments, the ones that would haunt her nightmares for years to come.
"Pandas." Connor stated, the edges of his lips tipping up into a knowing smile.
Sarah's pencil thin eyebrows creased into a frown as she surveyed him for a second, positive she had misheard. Connor met her eyes and for the first time since this whole ordeal had begun she thought she saw that tiny humorous glint in his exhausted blue eyes.
"Ethan loves pandas." Connor explained in more detail, his smile growing just a smidgen as he spoke. "On our days off he sometimes drags me to the zoo, it's always the first and last animal we go and see."
"So Doctor Choi, who is basically a badass, loves panda bears." Sarah said slowly allowing the words to filter into her head as a slow grin began to creep across her features.
"Honestly." Connor asserted, nodding to empathize his point. "Anything to do with them."
An idea was beginning to form inside Sarah's head, she could feel the beginning of it prickle at the recesses of her mind before she pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. She knew what Connor needed right now was a distraction, something to take his mind off of the awful predicament he was in and the terrible things his father had said.
"I'm need your help." she told Connor, indicating for him to also remove his cellphone from the pocket of his scrubs. "We're going to track down some pandas."
